


Shadow and Shade

by crossingwinter



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens (2015), Star Wars Episode VIII: The Last Jedi (2017), Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, F/M, Stream of Consciousness, Thoughts of Suicide
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-02-23
Updated: 2018-02-23
Packaged: 2019-03-08 09:00:57
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,390
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13454913
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/crossingwinter/pseuds/crossingwinter
Summary: He contemplates a fall, yet here she climbs.  What are they two?





	Shadow and Shade

**Author's Note:**

  * For [solikerez](https://archiveofourown.org/users/solikerez/gifts).



> Prompt filled was: The prompt was Reylo secretly meeting up post TLJ
> 
> I don’t for a second feel like this is how things will go down in IX. Enjoy a canon divergence!

He stands on the cliff above them. If any of them looked up, they would see him there, and someone would likely be sent to find out who was watching them, and why. There are too few of them now to risk losing even one more life.

The sun is rising behind him. His hands hang limply at his sides. He casts a shadow over the valley, but they probably think it comes from a mountaintop tree—not Kylo Ren.

He swallows. He reaches out through the dawn light, reaches out as he’d done subconsciously even as a baby, as he’d done seated in his Silencer and she’d been there, warm and bright and

_mommy—in a minute ben—mommy please look at it—did you draw this—uh huh—it’s very good you’re going to make a fine artist won’t you_

There’s nothing now.

No warm light. No feeling of her enveloping him as she pulled him onto his lap a lifetime ago, kissing the top of his head and telling him he could stay there if he sat still and didn’t distract her from her work, and that if he was very good she’d tell him a story at bedtime.

_let the past die kill it if you have to._

It had been hard enough to kill Han Solo.

He swallows again.

He can’t get the lump out of his throat, and the sting out of his eyes.

He rubs them with his fists

_come on dry your eyes little man daddy will be back before you know it—you promise mommy—i promise if he’s not he’ll have some explaining to do_

and he feels his whole jaw shaking now. He is being ripped apart all over again, and he didn’t even do it this time.

_the deed split your spirit to the bone_

What if he just went down there? Just go down there, and stand there while they buried her and if anyone tried to stand in his way he’d kill them. But the idea of taking out his lightsaber makes him feel sick. He can’t touch it now. He used it to kill his father, and now his mother…Corpses won’t bring her back—nothing will bring her back, and the screaming that he hears in the back of his mind as he imagines swiping his saber left and right is entirely his own.

He reaches out again because the only thing he’s ever been good at is hurting himself and he doesn’t feel that warm light of her. He can see more clearly than he has any right to how peaceful her face is as she lies on her bier, but he cannot feel any life within her anymore. But while there is no warm light, but there’s a brightness all the same, the cool blue blast of her the longer and farther he reaches.

Does she feel him too?

_don’t be afraid i feel it too_

Will she send men up to kill him? Or will she fear that she’s sending men to die, not knowing that Kylo Ren has sunk to his knees, is staring into the valley and wiping away tears that will not fall over his dead mother?

_there’s still light in him_

_leia i saw our son_

_bring him home_

Of course his mother had more faith in him than his uncle, more than his father. Of course she had.

_it was snoke_

He’s not sure how he knows that, though it could be the Force whispering in his ear, it had always been whispering in his ear, whispering whispering whispering

_it was snoke_

ever since he’d been a boy. How right she’d been. Of course she had been. She’d felt Snoke’s presence before Ben was even born, preying on his bloodline and hers.

He could just throw himself off the cliff and end it all.

_that mighty skywalker blood_

gone and dashed against his bone here on the planet where his mother was being laid to rest, where his grandmother had been born, where his grandmother had been buried. Let Hux deal with everything the way he wanted to—he doesn’t care anymore. He can’t care anymore. The darkness rises in him like bile, but it is turned inwards, this time. What’s the good of killing every living creature in existence, in slaughtering the fighters she’d died along side—what’s the good when he knows that won’t make any of it better, won’t take the pain away?

It’s a long fall.

With his luck, he’ll survive it.

_he’s got reflexes like yours luke he’ll make such a good jedi one day the force is so strong in him_

_there’s still light in him_

But with her died that hope, he supposes. As it should have. He was never a creature of the light

_you don’t understand han—he’s a grown man who can make his own decisions—you listen to me for once in your life—i listen plenty—so why aren’t you listening now—i am—you didn’t feel him when ben wasn’t born you didn’t feel that darkness i did han—it was ben’s—it wasn’t it was snoke—leia stop holding onto dreams and excuses ben’s always been darker than you thought he should be and blaming snoke is—the truth—makes it sound like he’s some child he’s not a child he had every opportunity to learn to be a good man from you from luke—from snoke—but he turned into the jedi killer instead—preying on our boy from before he was even born han you can’t give up on him_

and yet it had felt oddly…comforting that his mother thought he could be.

“Ben?”

He nearly jumps out of his skin as he whips around. It is not the sudden dampening of sound, the quiet that means she’s standing there behind him. And even if it were, she wouldn’t have said anything. Her gazes have been cold, her silences colder ever since their fight on the _Supremacy_.

“Down here.” Her voice comes from the edge of the cliff and he peers over it. She’s climbing the rock face. He contemplates a fall, yet here she climbs. What are they two?

“You’re going to fall and break your neck,” he says, extending a hand down to her. She swings herself up a little bit more and grabs his forearm and he pulls her up so that she’s sitting on the cliff at his side. She is not winded. She doesn’t even seem to have broken a sweat.

She stretches her arms and shoulders, her eyes on his. His face is wet, and if that expression on her face had belonged to anyone else he’d have thrown her from the cliff to her death because no one can see him like this, no one can see him sitting here sobbing for his mother, but Rey—he has nothing to hide from Rey.

She takes his hand—still gloved—and laces his fingers with her own, squeezing it.

He has cried twice over Rey.

The first time, he did not know it was happening, tears that fell as she stood in the rain and called him a monster. He had tried to convince himself it was the rain, but there’s something about Rey that meant he hadn’t been able to lie to himself effectively enough to be able to convince himself of that. The second time was when he lost

_her_

on Crait and her eyes had been so steely. He thrived on memories of that look in the forest, when she had enough rage in her to kill him—if only she had then—but seeing her standing there after gentle gazes and a gentle touch…

The tears come again—not delicate, not subtle, not one single droplet he can pretend is the wind. He is gasping and shaking, his face is contorting like it did when

_leia can’t you take him?—i have to finish this han he’s your son put him to bed—he won’t stop crying he used to stop crying when i held him—well maybe if you actually_

He slams those memories off.

He should slam them all off.

His mother was a traitor to his vision, his mother was the enemy, his mother is dead and that’s one less person who remembers him and thinks of him as some vision of how he should have been, and refuses to see him as he is.

Rey’s hand tightens in his.

It angers him.

“Why are you here?” he asks her, his voice low, and thicker than he would like. “You’ve made it perfectly clear what you think of me.”

This isn’t the Force connecting them—uncontrollable and whimsical as it seems to be with the two of them—this is her coming to find him, just as she had when she’d come to the _Supremacy_. And look how that had turned out.

Her hand is still in his. Her fingers are so small compared to his. But her grip—god her grip is strong. Of course it is. She’s strong—and stubborn, still calling him Ben.

Just like his mother.

“I felt you,” she says quietly. “I felt you looking for her.”

“How did she die?”

“Peacefully,” Rey replies. “Not long after Luke. I think the takeoff back into space so soon after the explosion on the bridge that nearly killed her—”

He can’t hear the rest of what Rey says. He can feel his finger on the trigger, feel his mother’s warmth as she sits a little straighter, as she holds her breath, waiting, wondering

_will you kill me like han is my son in there—mommy_

“Ben?”

“She wasn’t in pain?”

“No,” Rey says. “Apart from having difficulty breathing.”

“Did she say anything? Anything about…”

_there’s still light in him_

Silence is so loud sometimes.

He looks down at his gloved hand in hers, the black of the leather against the pale of her fingers. She is starting to lose the sunkissed color that life on Jakku had given her. Had she only come into his life a week ago? How he gravitates to her as a planet does around the sun.

“She said that no one is ever really gone,” Rey whispers. He looks at her. She’s watching him closely and before he realizes what she’s doing, she’s reached up to brush some of the tears away from his cheeks, her thumb running along the scar she gave him. The same place his father touched him right after he’d killed him.

Had Rey cut him there on purpose so he’d think of Han Solo every time he looked in the mirror?

Does she touch him there now to remind him of it now?

_split your soul apart_

_there is still light in him_

_the face of my son_

“And you believe her?” he asks and he wants to sound harsh, he wants to sound cutting but he sounds like

_but you promised me dad—i know kid but something came up i’ll show you how to fly the old girl soon i promise—are you gonna break that promise too—it’s not my fault_

“I do,” she says quietly. “I didn’t think she meant you, though. I thought she meant Luke.”

_see you around kid—bye dad remember your promise—i remember be good for your mother_

“And then you were here and you were so sad. I don’t think I’ve felt you sad before and I wondered…”

“If you can save my soul.”

“You made it perfectly clear that that wasn’t of interest to you,” Rey says and there’s a cutting firmness to her voice

_don’t do this_

He’d cried over her before he’d understood what was happening to him but had never expected her to cry over him. No. Not him.

_ben—mommy you’re home—i am have you been good—yes mommy i promise—is that a mommy promise or a daddy promise—a mommy promise i promise_

He’d have given her the galaxy, he would have. This desert rat scavenger from Jakku would have had stars at her fingertips. But she hadn’t wanted that. She hadn’t wanted him. She’d wanted

_ben—han solo i’ve been waiting for this day for a long time—take off that mask you don’t need it_

_ben can you behave yourself for a minute—what like you—listen to me kid i may be a smuggler but i’m still your father so shut up and—why don’t you shut up this time it’ll make for a nice change_

“No,” Rey continues and the memories of Han Solo fade away. “I realized something.”

She sounds oddly angry, ferocious and he sees that glint in her eyes that had taken his breath away when she shot first, when she’d thrown him from her blade and kicked him in the chest, when she closed the Falcon to him.

“And what’s that?”

“You’re afraid.”

_you…you’re afraid…_

He doesn’t say anything. He remembers fear, her pushing into his mind, blindingly bright when the only other presences in there had ever been dark.

“You’re afraid,” she says again, and she’s looking at him as though wanting her words to register. But he is a shell today. And so he just stares at her blankly, the freckles on her nose, the way her irises bleed hazel into brown, how chapped her lips are, the dark circles under her eyes. She is still the most beautiful thing he’s ever seen.

She wants him to ask, so he does. “What am I afraid of?”

_that you will never be as strong as darth vader_

“I don’t know,” she says. “But whatever it is, that’s where your pain comes from. And it’s not Kylo Ren’s pain—it’s Ben’s.”

He stares at her.

Of course she would think that, reaching out for his mother as he had, sitting here crying on the ground—Supreme Leader of the First Order, and she’s wiping tears from her face the way his mother once had done when his dad had left him behind again.

“Ben’s pain is at the core of what made Kylo Ren, what Snoke was able to build on,” Rey says. She’s holding the eagerness out of her voice as best she can, but he can still see it bleeding through out of her eyes.

_fear leads to anger anger leads to hate hate leads to suffering—that doesn’t sound right—it’s what master yoda taught me—fear isn’t the only thing that leads to anger though—it’s not meant to imply that it’s the only thing that does but it is a path and one that we must always seek to avoid by tempering our thoughts and actions that is the jedi way—i’ll try—are you afraid ben—no i’m not master—ben—_

“I’m not afraid,” he says dully. “I have nothing to be afraid of.”

“Because you’ve already lost everything?” Rey asks.

I lost you, he wants to tell her. We could have had the stars but I lost you instead.

But she’s sitting here holding his hand.

Ben’s hand.

She keeps calling him Ben. She should stop doing that. Ben Solo is gone.

But what will happen when she stops trying? His mother never lost faith in him, somehow—even after he had

_split your spirit to the bone_

murdered his father. Will Rey?

_ben’s pain is at the core of what made kylo ren_

It is the truth, he supposes. His uncle had looked the way he had the day he’d tried to murder him. He’d done it on purpose. It had worked. Pain, fear, anger,

_i failed you ben_

It doesn’t matter.

His uncle is dead now, and Ben lives.

Kylo lives.

She started calling him Ben and everything started to get muddled.

Things had been so clear before, harden yourself, don’t let anyone own your strength, destroy those who’ve hurt you—Ben Solo first, and then the rest.

_ben’s pain is at the core of what made kylo ren_

_you’re not alone_

_neither are you_

The wind rustles and he feels it like fingers in his hair.

He realizes she’s waiting for him to respond—or maybe she just likes sitting there in silence with him. Silence is nice, it means he can pretend that she’ll stay, that she’d accepted his offer and that she is here with him now because of Kylo Ren and not because of the ghost of Ben Solo.

“Ben Solo is gone,” he says.

“He’s not. He’s right here, crying over his mother.”

“He died with Leia Organa then, the last person alive who knew him.”

“And what am I?” Rey asks heatedly. “Ben, I know you.”

“Do you?” Is he demanding or is he wondering? He might have thought she knew him before the _Supremacy_ , when she had come to him. But she was the same as everyone else in the end—the same as Skywalker, the same as Snoke, using him for his power, seeing his power in the future she wanted to be a part of. Why was everyone allowed to use his power for their ends except him? That didn’t seem fair.

_life’s not fair sweetheart—but why not—because sometimes people don’t behave the way that they should they don’t treat people the way they should and when they hold power and do that everything becomes unfair—how do we make it fair then—by doing the best we can_

“You see me crying over my mother, you take my hand and tell me you see me turning but the second I offer myself to you—”

“You weren’t offering yourself to me,” Rey says flatly.

“I was.”

“No,” she says. “You were offering me Ben’s pain. I want Ben—his pain, yes, but the rest of him too.”

“Ben’s dead,” he sneers at her. “I keep telling you this.”

“He’s not,” she replies stubbornly. “Was it Kylo Ren who saved me from Snoke? Kylo Ren served Snoke, and Ben resisted him.”

He’s getting angrier now—she’s so infuriatingly stubborn

_you and daddy were fighting—we weren’t fighting we were arguing—does that mean you hate each other—no ben your dad and i we we we’re both very stubborn which means we get frustrated with one another when we don’t agree but it also means we’re stubborn about how much we love each other—so when you fight—argue—when you argue it means that you love each other—when we argue it doesn’t mean we don’t_

and the anger disappears again.

She more than anyone he’s ever met, any master who’s ever tried to train him, can strip the anger right out of him. Was this what Ben Solo was supposed to feel like? He’d never really known. No one ever really allowed him to know.

_you’re going to make a great jedi like your uncle, kid_

_can you be brave for me and your father i know you can_

_you’ve got to keep your heart under control ben control is at the core of what it is to be a jedi_

_the seed of darth vader_

“You talk of me as if I’m two people,” he says. “I’m not. I’m one person. I’m all of it.”

It guts him more than he can say. It was Kylo Ren that had spun dreams of a future with her, not Ben Solo. He hasn’t been Ben Solo in so long.

“Then be Kylo Ren,” she replies. “I don’t care what name you go by.” Her hand is on his cheek again, stroking his damp skin, right along that scar that

_split your spirit to the bone_

she’d cut into his face. Her fingers are calloused, and yet he’s never felt anything softer in his life. “This is as much who you are as everything you say you are. Stop pretending that it’s not.”

He swallows. For one brief moment he imagines kissing her the way he had seen when they’d touched hands that first time, of wrapping her in his arms and holding her and kissing her deeply the way he’d used to see his father and mother kissing when they thought he couldn’t see them. For one brief moment he imagines shedding his blacks, shedding the world—the violent ambitions that fueled him because none of them mattered so long as she smiled at him like he dreamed she did. So long as she kept holding his hand, everything would be fine—he would make it through everything. He’d feel safe, shielded at his weakest, the way he did when he was a boy, the way he did when his mother was alive.

_when will the pain stop?—the pain is what makes you strong ride it_

_you…you’re afraid…that you will never be as strong as darth vader_

The only other thing he’s ever been good at—apart from hurting himself—is failing, is letting down everyone he loves.

He’s already let her down, he’s let his mother down, his father, his uncle…The only person he can’t let down is himself, because he’d be a fool to say he loved himself.

“I’m not pretending,” he says. “I can’t be the person you want me to be—that they all wanted me to be. You think if I could, I’d—” he cuts himself off.

“I think you’re afraid to try again,” Rey tells him firmly.

“I’m not afraid. It’s the truth, Rey.”

A strange look crosses her face, a look he’s never seen there before. It’s not stubborn, it’s not defiant. It takes him a moment to realize that it reminds him of his mother.

“No. You’re still holding on. Let go.” Rey releases his hand and projects herself off the ledge and Kylo surges forward to stop her, watches as she falls through the air and lands gracefully on her own feet all the way below on the valley floor. Because of course she can. Rey is cold control when it comes to the Force. It’s how she’s bested him every time.

_you must learn to control yourself ben you’re so strong but you must learn control_

_only a fool of a jedi would seek to control the raw untamed power of your blood you are better off without skywalker_  

It’s how she bests him now.

She does not look over her shoulder as she runs through the valley back to the gathered Resistance fighters below, still gathered around his mother’s bier. He watches as one of them breaks away.

And suddenly his ears go that familiar numb and he’s standing behind facing Rey behind the man who is approaching her. He sees Rey’s eyes flicker towards him before she turns her attention to—

“What was it?” the man asks and it’s the pilot—the one that Kylo had found on Jakku, had tortured for information that had led him, ultimately, to Rey. Poe Dameron. That was his name.

“Nothing,” Rey says.

“You’re sure?”

She gives Dameron a look and Kylo can’t see his face but a moment later Rey has wrapped her arm around him in a brief hug. “It’s hard,” she tells him. “I know. She’d be proud of you.”

Her eyes are closed as she comforts Commander Dameron and Kylo feels jealousy bubbling in his chest.

She had not comforted him, he realizes. He’d been too stunned that she’d come to find him at all to notice that. She’d prodded and pried but comforted him the way she comforts Dameron, taking him in her arms, speaking of how proud his mother would be?

_no one is ever really gone_

He hates the way that Dameron’s arm wraps around Rey’s back as well—that she does not push him away, or pull herself away from him—hates the way, unbidden, Dameron’s flippant tongue comes to his mind, reminding him of his father. Is he in charge of his mother’s legacy now that Leia Organa is dead? Had she seen in him the son she’d lost in Ben’s failures?

“I’m going to need you to do something,” Dameron says when at last—after much too long—the hug breaks. He reaches up and rubs his eyes and Kylo can tell he is crying. He hears that same thickness in Dameron’s throat that he still feels in his own.

“Anything,” Rey says at once. She is ignoring him still. He is standing right behind Dameron, right in front of her, and yet she is ignoring him.

“We’re low,” Dameron tells her, his voice quiet, and urgent, and he reaches out to take Rey’s hand. He isn’t wearing gloves. “And on the run. And you saw what Kylo Ren tried to do on Crait. We only made it out of there through sheer dumb luck.”

“And the Force,” Rey corrects him. “Luke…”

Dameron nods. “Finn says you’ve beaten him before. Is that true?”

The slash across the face, the growls of triumph she had made as she’d prowled around him—and yet Dameron will never know how profoundly she has defeated him without ever lifting her blade.

In that moment, he knows exactly what Dameron is asking. Can you put him down like the mad cur that he is? End this? Destroy him?

“After a fashion,” Rey says slowly. Her gaze is guarded, her words slow.

“If he comes after us—if he brings the full force of the First Order down on us—” and recognition flashes in her eyes, and her eyes leave Poe’s face and land on his and something is radiating out of her, something so unlike her usually cold bright light.

She glows warm when she says—not to Dameron, but to— _for_ — _him_ , “Leave Kylo Ren to me.”

What game is she playing, her and those blazing hazel eyes?

He is afraid.

Not that she will kill him—he knows she won’t somewhere down in the depths of his understanding. Not even that she will save him, because she doesn’t know how to, no one ever has. Only he knows how to walk the path to his own peace and she is right—it terrifies him.

_you…you’re afraid_

He is holding on.

_can you do it can you be stronger than vader?_

And he needs to let go.

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading! You can find me [here](http://crossingwinter.tumblr.com/reylo) on tumblr.


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